| warming up |
—Piper woke up cold and shivering.
She'd had the worst dream about an old guy with donkey ears chasing her around and shouting, You're it!
"Oh, god." Her teeth chattered. "He turned me to gold!"
"You're okay now." Jason leaned over and tucked a warm blanket around her, but she still felt as cold as a Boread.
She blinked, trying to figure out where they were. Next to her, a campfire blazed, turning the air sharp with smoke. Firelight flickered against rock walls. They were in a shallow cave, but it didn't offer much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It might've been day or night. The storm made it too dark to tell.
"L-L-Leo?" Piper managed.
"Present and un-gold-ified." Leo was also wrapped in blankets. He didn't look great, but better than Piper felt. "I got the precious metal treatment too,"
"Always appreciate being remembered" Camilla's voice was hoarse. Piper had to do a double take when she managed to look at her. She looked mostly the same, but her eyes looked sadder than Piper had ever seen her and she sported a nasty deep cut on her cheek that travelled from just below her right eye to her jaw. "How bad is it? Don't lie"
Piper sucked in a small breath. The cut looked really bad, it was red raw and must have hurt from the way Camilla winced everytime she spoke. Piper knew it was deep enough to scar.
"You look badass" Piper said instead, "Like one of those zombie apocalypse survivors that are actually huge softies"
"You calling me a softie?" Camilla raised her eyebrow but there was a ghost of a smirk on her features.
Piper resisted the urge to ask if the wound hurt. Instead she asked, "Did Midas turn you into a statue too?"
Camilla shivered but it didn't have anything to do with the cold. "Yeah, just after you guys. That Lityerses creep cut up my face and then I accidentally fell near Midas"
"This is why I always say, don't trust hot guys" Leo chimed in.
"I make it a point to stay away from guys in general"
Piper shivered a bit more violently. The chill, it seemed to shock her to her bones. Her and Camilla's hair was still wet and though the fire was warm, it didn't do much to help.
Jason frowned like a mother hen taking care of its chicks. "Leo and Camilla came out of the gold pretty easy, we don't know why. We had to dunk you in the river to get you back completely. Tried to dry you off, but... it's really, really cold."
"You've got hypothermia," Camilla said. "We risked as much nectar as we could. Coach Hedge did a little nature magic—"
"Sports medicine." The coach's ugly face loomed over her. "Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. You probably won't die. Probably."
"Thanks," Piper said weakly. "How did you beat Midas?"
Jason told her the story, putting most of it down to luck.
The coach snorted. "Kid's being modest. You should've seen him. Hi-yah! Slice! Boom with the lightning!"
"Coach, you didn't even see it," Jason said. "You were outside eating the lawn."
But the satyr was just warming up. "Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterward, I told him, 'Kid, I'm proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength—'"
"Coach," said Jason.
"Yeah?"
"Shut up, please."
"Sure." The coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel.
Even though Camilla was going through something internally, she put it aside to focus on Piper. It made Piper feel all warm an fuzzy and not because of the blankets she was wrapped in.
Camilla put her hand on Piper's forehead and checked her temperature. "Leo, can you stoke the fire?"
"On it." Leo summoned a baseball-sized clump of flames and lobbed it into the campfire.
"Do I look that bad?" Piper shivered.
"Not worse than me"
And Piper couldn't argue with that. "Where are we?"
"Pikes Peak," Jason said. "Colorado."
"But that's, what—five hundred miles from Omaha?"
"Something like that," Jason agreed. "I harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far. They didn't like it—went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. I'm not going to be trying that again."
"Why are we here?"
Leo sniffed. "That's what I asked him."
Jason gazed into the storm as if watching for something. "That glittery wind trail we saw yesterday? It was still in the sky, though it had faded a lot. I followed it until I couldn't see it anymore. Then—honestly I'm not sure. I just felt like this was the right place to stop."
"'Course it is." Coach Hedge spit out some cudgel splinters. "Aeolus's floating palace should be anchored above us, right at the peak. This is one of his favorite spots to dock."
"Maybe that was it." Jason knit his eyebrows. "I don't know. Something else, too..."
"The Hunters were heading west," Piper remembered. "Do you think they're around here?"
Jason rubbed his forearm as if the tattoos were bothering him. "I don't see how anyone could survive on the mountain right now. The storm's pretty bad. It's already the evening before the solstice, but we didn't have much choice except to wait out the storm here. We had to give you some time to rest before we tried moving."
He didn't need to convince her. The wind howling outside the cave scared her, and she couldn't stop shivering.
"We have to get you warm" Jason said, the tips of his ears turning red, "Uh, Camilla do you mind?"
"What?"
"You know... warming her up"
Now it was Camilla's turn to turn beetroot red. Piper had never seen her like this, it almost made her forget her troubles and laugh aloud.
"Why me?"
"Cause you're a girl" Leo said with the same tone one might say duh.
"Yeah, so? I like girls. If anything, Jason and I are on equal ground here"
"So you don't wanna warm me up?" Piper tried to stop her teeth from chattering. She sounded like a cartoon skeleton. And for some annoying reason, she didn't like that Camilla was refusing to 'warm her up'.
"I didn't say that"
"Scoot closer" Piper didn't use charmspeak, but she slipped in a more ordering tone instead of asking, leaving no room for Camilla to turn into a bumbling mess.
Camilla, of course, obliged, scooting closer until they had to merge their pile of blankets. Her skin was cold and Piper's arm was pressed against her. That's how Piper had woken up in Midas' house as well and she couldn't shake the feeling that she should think about what that feeling meant.
Coach Hedge chewed on his club and spit splinters into the fire.
Leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet. "So, guys, long as you're cuddled up for story time... something I've been meaning to tell you. On the way to Omaha, I had this dream. Kinda hard to understand with the static and the Wheel of Fortune breaking in—"
"Wheel of Fortune?" Piper assumed Leo was kidding, but when he looked up from his burgers, his expression was deadly serious.
"The thing is," he said, "my dad Hephaestus talked to me."
Leo told them about his dream. In the firelight, with the wind howling, the story was even creepier. Piper could imagine the static-filled voice of the god warning about giants who were the sons of Tartarus, and about Leo losing some friends along the way.
She tried to concentrate on something good: Camilla's arms that slowly went from pressed against her to snaking around her shoulders until Camilla was holding her, the warmth slowly spreading into her body, but she was terrified. "I don't understand. If demigods and gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would the gods stay silent? If they need us—"
"Ha," said Coach Hedge. "The gods hate needing humans. They like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before Zeus admits he made a mistake closing Olympus."
"Coach," Camilla said, her chin resting on Piper's shoulder, "that was almost an intelligent comment."
Hedge huffed. "What? I'm intelligent! I'm not surprised you cupcakes haven't heard of the Giant War. The gods don't like to talk about it. Bad PR to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. That's just embarrassing."
"There's more, though," Jason said. "When I dreamed about Hera in her cage, she said Zeus was acting unusually paranoid. And Hera— she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. What if someone's influencing the gods, like Medea influenced us?"
Piper shuddered. She'd had a similar thought—that some force they couldn't see was manipulating things behind the scenes, helping the giants. Maybe the same force was keeping Enceladus informed about their movements, and had even knocked their dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Perhaps Leo's sleeping Dirt Woman, or another servant of hers...
Leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast. "Yeah, Hephaestus said something similar, like Zeus was acting weirder than usual. But what bothered me was the stuff my dad didn't say. Like a couple of times he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. I don't know. He acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible—like Hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret Hephaestus wasn't supposed to tell me."
Jason shifted.
"Chiron was the same way back at camp," he said. "He mentioned a sacred oath not to discuss—something. Coach, you know anything about that?"
"Nah. I'm just a satyr. They don't tell us the juicy stuff. Especially an old—" He stopped himself.
"An old guy like you?" Piper asked. "But you're not that old, are you?"
"Hundred and six," the coach muttered.
Camilla coughed. "Say what?"
"Don't catch your hair on fire, Romani. That's just fifty-three in human years. Still, yeah, I made some enemies on the Council of Cloven Elders. I've been a protector a longtime. But they started saying I was getting unpredictable. Too violent. Can you imagine?"
"Wow." Piper tried not to look at her friends. "That's hard to believe."
Coach scowled. "Yeah, then finally we get a good war going with the Titans, and do they put me on the front lines? No! They send me as far away as possible—the Canadian frontier, can you believe it? Then after the war, they put me out to pasture. The Wilderness School. Bah! Like I'm too old to be helpful just because I like playing offense. All those flower-pickers on the Council—talking about nature."
"I thought satyrs liked nature," Piper ventured.
"Shoot, I love nature," Hedge said. "Nature means big things killing and eating little things! And when you're a —you know—vertically challenged satyr like me, you get in good shape, you carry a big stick, and you don't take nothing from no one! That's nature." Hedge snorted indignantly. "Flower-pickers. Anyway, I hope you got something vegetarian cooking, Valdez. I don't do flesh."
"Yeah, Coach. Don't eat your cudgel. I got some tofu patties here. Piper's a vegetarian too. I'll throw them on in a second."
The smell of frying burgers filled the air. Piper usually hated the smell of cooking meat, but her stomach rumbled like it wanted to mutiny.
I'm losing it, she thought. Think broccoli. Carrots. Lentils.
Her stomach wasn't the only thing rebelling. Lying by the fire, with Camilla holding her, Piper's conscience felt like a hot bullet slowing working its way toward her heart. All the guilt she'd been holding in for the last week, since the giant Enceladus had first sent her a dream, was about to kill her.
Her friends wanted to help her. Jason even said he'd walk into a trap to save her dad. And Piper had shut them out.
For all she knew, she'd already doomed her father when she attacked Medea.
She choked back a sob. Maybe she'd done the right thing in Chicago by saving her friends, but she'd only delayed her problem. She could never betray her friends, but the tiniest part of her was desperate enough to think, What if I did?
She tried to imagine what her dad would say. Hey, Dad, if you were ever chained up by a cannibal giant and I had to betray a couple of friends to save you, what should I do?
Piper wished the others weren't there so she could talk to Camilla about this.
Funny, that had never come up when they did Any Three Questions. Her dad would never take the question seriously, of course. He'd probably tell her one of Grandpa Tom's old stories—something with glowing hedgehogs and talking birds—and then laugh about it as if the advice was silly.
Piper wished she remembered her grandpa better. Sometimes she dreamed about that little two-room house in Oklahoma. She wondered what it would've been like to grow up there.
Her dad would think that was nuts. He'd had spent his whole life running away from that place, distancing himself from the rez, playing any role except Native American.
She'd learned to be vaguely uncomfortable about her ancestry—like Dad's old pictures from the eighties. Being Cherokee was also something he seemed to be mildly embarrassed by. Piper didn't want herself to be that way. She wanted to embrace that part of her.
But what else were they? Dad didn't seem to know. Maybe that's why he was always so unhappy, changing roles. Maybe that's why Piper started stealing things, looking for something her dad couldn't give her.
Leo put tofu patties on the skillet. The wind kept raging. Piper thought of an old story her dad had told her... one that maybe did answer some of her questions.
One day in second grade she'd come home in tears and demanded why her father had named her Piper. The kids were making fun of her because Piper Cherokee was a kind of airplane.
Her dad laughed, as if that had never occurred to him. "No, Pipes. Fine airplane. That's not how I named you. Grandpa Tom picked out your name. First time he heard you cry, he said you had a powerful voice—better than any reed flute piper. He said you'd learn to sing the hardest Cherokee songs, even the snake song."
"The snake song?"
Dad told her the legend—how one day a Cherokee woman had seen a snake playing too near her children and killed it with a rock, not realizing it was the king of rattlesnakes. The snakes prepared for war on the humans, but the woman's husband tried to make peace. He promised he'd do anything to repay the rattlesnakes. The snakes held him to his word. They told him to send his wife to the well so the snakes could bite her and take her life in exchange. The man was heartbroken, but he did what they asked. Afterward, the snakes were impressed that the man had given up so much and kept his promise. They taught him the snake song for all the Cherokee to use. From that point on, if any Cherokee met a snake and sang that song, the snake would recognize the Cherokee as a friend, and would not bite.
"That's awful!" Piper had said. "He let his wife die?"
Her dad spread his hands. "It was a hard sacrifice. But one life brought generations of peace between snakes and Cherokee. Grandpa Tom believed that Cherokee music could solve almost any problem. He thought you'd know lots of songs, and be the greatest musician of the family. That's why we named you Piper."
A hard sacrifice. Had her grandfather foreseen something about her, even when she was a baby? Had he sensed she was a child of Aphrodite? Her dad would probably tell her that was crazy. Grandpa Tom was no oracle.
But still... she'd made a promise to help on this quest. Her friends were counting on her. They'd saved her when Midas had turned her to gold. They'd brought her back to life. She couldn't repay them with lies.
Gradually, she started to feel warmer. She stopped shivering and settled against Camilla's chest. Leo handed out the food. Piper didn't want to move, talk, or do anything to disrupt the moment. But she had to.
"We need to talk." She sat up so she could face them. "I don't want to hide anything from you guys anymore."
Camilla looked at her with her mouth full of burger. She gave Piper a look that said, You serious?
"Dead serious" Piper nodded. Too late to change her mind now.
"Okay" Camilla swallowed her bite, "I'm okay with telling them if you are"
"Sorry, I should have asked"
"No, it's okay" Camilla assured her. Her left arm was still around Piper while she ate with her right. Piper didn't smell any meat so maybe Camilla was eating a vegetarian burger since she was so close to Piper at the moment.
Again, that stupid warm and fuzzy feeling.
"Three nights before the Grand Canyon trip," Piper began, "I had a dream vision—a giant, telling me my father had been taken hostage. I found out later that Camilla's dad had also gone through a similar situation"
"My social worker—" Camilla said, "She told me they transferred him to some other facility. But then I got the dream of this Giant that told me I had to cooperate or my dad would be killed."
The flames crackled.
Finally Jason said, "Enceladus? Piper mentioned that name before."
Coach Hedge whistled. "Big giant. Breathes fire. Not somebody I'd want barbecuing my daddy goat."
Jason gave him a shut up look. "Guys, go on. What happened next?"
Piper took a deep breath. Camilla's hand slipped from around her waist and into her hand. "I—I tried to reach my dad, but all I got was his personal assistant, and she told me not to worry."
"Jane?" Leo remembered. "Didn't Medea say something about controlling her?"
Piper nodded. "To get our dads back, the giant told us to sabotage this quest. And that was before I realized it would be the four of us. Then after we started the quest, Enceladus sent me another warning: He told me he wanted you two dead. He wants us to lead you to a mountain. I don't know exactly which one, but it's in the Bay Area—I could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the summit. I have to be there by noon on the solstice, tomorrow. An exchange."
She couldn't meet her friends' eyes. She waited for them to yell at them, or turn their backs, or kick them out into the snowstorm. Camilla's hand squeezed hers as if she was thinking similar thoughts.
Instead, Leo scooted closer to Camilla and bumped shoulders with her while Jason reached out to put his hand on Piper's. "God, Piper. I'm so sorry."
Leo nodded. "No kidding. You guys have been carrying this around for a week? Cam, we could help you."
"Damn," Camilla looked up at the boy, "And here I thought you guys would have yelled at us or something. We were literally ordered to kill you"
"Aw, come on," Jason said. "You're both our friends. And you've saved us on this quest. I trust you guys with my life."
"Same," Leo said. "Can I have a hug too?"
Camilla instantly gave in and pulled Leo into a hug, Piper thought she heard her sniffle, but didn't mention it.
Piper wasn't done though. "You don't get it!" she said. "I've probably just killed our dads, telling you this."
"I doubt it." Coach Hedge belched. He was eating his tofu burger folded inside the paper plate, chewing it all like a taco. "Giant hasn't gotten what he wants yet, so he still needs your dads for leverage. He'll wait until the deadline passes, see if you show up. He wants you to divert the quest to this mountain, right?"
Piper nodded uncertainly.
"So that means Hera is being kept somewhere else," Hedge reasoned. "And she has to be saved by the same day. So you have to choose—rescue your dads, or rescue Hera. If you go after Hera, then Enceladus takes care of your dads. Besides, Enceladus would never let you go even if you cooperated. You're obviously two of the eight in the Great Prophecy."
One of the eight. She'd talked about this before with her friends, and she supposed it must be true, but she still had trouble believing it. She didn't feel that important. She was just a stupid child of Aphrodite. How could she be worth deceiving and killing?
"So we have no choice," Camilla said miserably, still hugging Leo. Piper wasn't sure why she felt her stomach flip at how cozy the two of them looked. "We have to save Hera, or the giant king gets unleashed. That's our quest. The world depends on it. And Enceladus isn't stupid. He'll know if we change course and go the wrong way. He'll kill our dads"
"He's not going to kill your dads," Leo said. "We'll save them."
"We don't have time!" Piper cried. "Besides, it's a trap."
"We're your friends, beauty queen," Leo said. "We're not going to let your dads die. We just gotta figure out a plan."
Coach Hedge grumbled. "Would help if we knew where this mountain was. Maybe Aeolus can tell you that. The Bay Area has a bad reputation for demigods. Old home of the Titans, Mount Othrys, sits over Mount Tam, where Atlas holds up the sky. I hope that's not the mountain you saw."
"Maybe that place is important. Not everything with a bad reputation is bad" Camilla shrugged, "I mean, look at Taylor Swift"
Piper ignored her and tried to remember the vista in her dreams. "I don't think so. This was inland."
Jason frowned at the fire, like he was trying to remember something.
"Bad reputation... that doesn't seem right. The Bay Area..."
"You think you've been there?" Piper asked.
"I..." He looked like he was almost on the edge of a breakthrough. Then the anguish came back into his eyes. "I don't know. Hedge, what happened to Mount Othrys?"
Hedge took another bite of paper and burger. "Well, Kronos built a new palace there last summer. Big nasty place, was going to be the headquarters for his new kingdom and all. Weren't any battles there, though. Kronos marched on Manhattan, tried to take Olympus. If I remember right, he left some other Titans in charge of his palace, but after Kronos got defeated in Manhattan, the whole palace just crumbled on its own."
"No," Jason said.
Everyone looked at him.
"What do you mean, 'No'?" Camilla asked.
"That's not what happened. I—" He tensed, looking toward the cave entrance. "Did you hear that?"
For a second, nothing. Then Piper heard it: howls piercing the night.
Piper could probably kiss Camilla on the mouth and her dumbass self would still be like, huh, neato, Piper doesn't have internalized misogyny anymore I love having her as a friend
And that's on growing up with heteronormativity, for example, I full on cuddled with a friend of mine during sleepovers when I was 10 and still didn't realize I liked women